Tag: writing

You might think essay writing and song writing are incredibly different. After all, they use entirely different paths to influence you. Songwriting is about getting you on an emotional level while essay writing is about getting you on an intellectual one. In truth, however, that’s a false dichotomy. Something doesn’t have to be either emotional or intellectual. They can be both.

In fact, the most convincing arguments you’ll hear in your life have aspects of both. They use important lessons from songwriting to influence how they approach arguments. And that makes sense, as memorability and likability are just as important for essays as the strength of the arguments.

So what ideas from songwriting can you use in your essay?

Songs stick to a red line

If you take a song you like you can summarize it in a sentence. Go ahead and try. This helps keep you and the rest of the listeners on the same page. You understand how a new verse relates to the underlying song’s message.

In an academic essay, you should have a similar red line. Every verse (or paragraph) needs to directly contribute to your central claim or thesis. If it does not, then you’re meandering off course. That means that either your readers will not understand the point of what they’re reading, or they’ll have a moment of confusion when you suddenly yank them back to the central theme of your essay. Both of those are not good.

It uses simple language

The best songs are universal. Everybody can understand them at least at some level. College essay should be the same. As any college essay writing service like rewardedessays.com will tell you, it shouldn’t be the language that is hard, but instead the underlying ideas that are difficult.

Even better, if you can take an underlying idea that is difficult and explain it in a simple manner (which is not the same as oversimplifying it) then you’re a king of the academic writing process.

A lot of the same strategies work

There are a whole bunch of systems that songwriters use to make tunes catch. They might use repetition, or variation of a central idea. They will use iambic pentameter, or the flow of the words to make something more memorable. They will use the rule of three and similar strategies to make certain structures pop.

You can do the same thing to make your essays more convincing. No, these structures will not compensate for a weak argument. The argument still needs to be airtight and well be constructed. Nonetheless, when you have a well-formed argument then you can make it even more convincing, comprehensible and easier to remember by using song-like structures in your text.